Identical Twin Sisters Accused Of 'Cheating' Sue School For Rs 12 Crore & Win

Cheating in an exam is a pretty serious offence if you are caught doing it. It's a different thing if you are caught cheating in the exam hall in person, but has it ever happened to you that the teacher came back with your answer sheet and your friends and accused you of cheating because the answer was pretty much the same? That appears to be unfair, and it is certain to enrage anyone.

Something similar happened with two identical twin sisters, but they didn't sit quietly about it. They sued the school for accusing them of cheating and won a Rs. 12 crore defamation lawsuit. Here's what happened.

Identical twin sisters filed a lawsuit against their school after it accused them of cheating

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A pair of identical twin sisters, who are identified as Kayla and Kylie Bingham, were accused of cheating in an exam at their medical college. Back in 2016, when the sisters were appearing for their test in May during their second year of studies at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). They were accused of cheating on their year-end medical school exams.

The sisters, who were 24 back then, were allegedly accused of "academic dishonesty" after test proctors reviewed their exam results and revealed that they were quite similar. That's when they decided to file a defamation suit against the university.

The exam answer sheet was quite similar

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Upon checking both of their answer sheets, they came out quite similar.

As a matter of fact, the sisters had identical answers to 296 of 307 questions, including 54 that were wrong. It can be alarming for anyone on a school board. Hence, the school's "honour council" alleged that the sisters "were signalling one another and passing notes," the court documents revealed.

The council eventually came to the conclusion that they cheated on the exam. However, the girls claimed that they were seated four to five feet apart in the examination hall and couldn't even see each other. "It was an eight-hour exam during which we exhibited normal test-taking behaviour," Kayla told CBS.

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The sisters then appealed the council's decision in court and filed a lawsuit against the university. Their argument was that they had behaved and performed similarly academically and in athletics for years, which is also a pretty common phenomenon for twins. The sisters had a strikingly similar score on many exams like the SATs, MCATs, and LSTATs.

According to Nancy Segal, a professor at the California State University, Fullerton's Twin Studies Center, several studies reveal that many identical twins often perform similarly in tests and other competitive activities.

Following that, last month, the jury ruled that the school had defamed the sisters and awarded them a total of $1.5 million (which is approximately Rs 12.39 crore) in damages.

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